


A List Of Reasons (I Don't Want You To Know)

by Krasimer



Series: The Summerhold Chronicles [10]
Category: Danny Phantom, Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Danny and Vlad have kids together, M/M, Not Phantom Planet Compliant, Vlad's Clone Children, fight me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:44:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>William Carter has a nightmare and a dream, in that order.</p><p>Of course it's not over yet.</p><p>(In which information is gained and stories are told.)</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Children In The Home

If there was ever a time that Vlad honestly hated everything about his life, this might be it: Stuck in a room with an angry Time Keeper, what were essentially his children, a young man he'd been having very intimate dreams about, and being told that for the timeline to survive, he would have to accept a group of people into his home that he knew nothing about.

Clockwork's red gaze landed on him again, the angry twist of his lips betrayed by the amusement in his eyes. "I am," he began slowly, voice thick with sarcasm. "So very sorry for the inconvenience, Vlad Masters." 

Rolling his own eyes, Vlad crossed his arms over his chest. "You're lying."

"I cannot say whether I am or not." Clockwork returned, a small smirk changing the expression entirely. "Daniel, Danielle, and Dan will be needed to...Shall we say, smooth over the interactions, but you will be necessary to keep everything moving." he swung his staff in a small circle, the still-scarred end of it drawing a glowing blue line in the air. "If this is not done correctly, there is every chance that what was done to steady the world after Rewind's attack will be in vain."

He stared Vlad down, focused intently on him for a moment before sighing and waving the others away. 

It took Danny a moment to leave Vlad's side, and when he did, he went slowly. His eyes lingered on the older Halfa, one hand lifted slightly as if he were going to reach out to him. 

Blue met blue and held, both of them breathing in at the same time.

And then the moment was over, Danny followed Danielle and a reluctant Dan out of the room, a joke on the tip of his tongue as he closed the door behind them, his words cut off and leaving only silence.

"There is a reason you must be the one to house them, Vlad." Clockwork's voice was softer now, more like a parent explaining a sad fact of the world to an upset child than anything else. "They are, aside from being somewhat special in terms of destructive force upon the timelines," he waved his staff again, creating a small window-like construction that allowed a view of somewhere else. "Your children."

The view was of a group of teenagers, all of them pale skinned with dark hair and blue eyes.

"Technically, they are Dan and Danielle's siblings, as well as your children." 

Sounding like someone had kicked him in the gut, the Halfa managed to say, "And technically they are Daniel's as well, correct?"

"Correct."

"I thought they were dead," Vlad whispered as he raised a hand to the hole, tracing a careful finger along the shape of it, not actually touching it. "They melted away, and I-" he choked on his words, his other hand rising to cover his mouth as his eyes went suspiciously watery. 

Clockwork moved closer, actually forming his legs from the nothingness of his tail to stand next to the man. "Perhaps it would be better to say that they are not your children yet. Part of why they pose a dilemma and a threat to the timeline is because they are unstable, and they are unstable because-"

"They don't have the full combination of my DNA and Daniel's." Vlad swallowed hard, frowning as he looked at his own hand. 

"Precisely." Clockwork nodded his approval. "Which begs the question: What are you going to do about this? And remember, they just need to be moved from their point in the timeline to yours, after that, there is no need to keep-"

Vlad interrupted again, his eyes flashing an angry red for a second. "Are you suggesting I let them die? I did that once, wrapped up in my own madness and a stupid need for anything even remotely resembling Daniel in my life, I will not do it AGAIN." he hissed out a breath, fists clenched at his sides and bursting into small flames. "I will not let myself become what I was." his voice was a whisper now, his anger turning inwards. "I will not take several steps backwards when I mean to take so many more forwards."

A victorious smile was his answer, the ghostly Master of Time gripping his staff tightly in both hands and leaning partially on it. "Good."

They stared at each other for a moment before Vlad sighed, eyes slipping closed. "Will they know who I am?" he asked quietly. "Or are you just going to drop them off with me and not tell them anything?"

"I will have informed them of the situation before I leave them with you," Clockwork answered, leaning more on his staff and smiling. 

"Wonderful," Vlad muttered, scrubbing a hand down his face. "I need to tell Daniel what is happening. If we're to be the hosts of a group of displaced-in-time people who just so happen to be our children, then he should know the full story of who they are." he swallowed nervously. "I mean, he already knows I created them, but..."

"They're being pulled from the moments before their deaths." Clockwork filled in. "They won't remember dying, because it will perpetually be happening in the past and not happening in their new futures."

"Stable paradoxes." Vlad sighed as he shook his head. 

Clockwork grinned, sharp-edged teeth exposed in an almost feral way. "What else did you expect?"

 

XxXxX

 

The next day, when the Masters mansion woke up, they were just there.

The entire group of cloned children was in the living room, clustered together in a way that suggested comfort and too little personal space for anyone involved who wasn't one of them. Danny was the first to discover them, emerging from the room that Vlad had allowed him to choose and heading for the kitchen.

He stopped, scratching at the back of his head as he watched them for a few moments. 

One of them, the smallest of the group that he could see, opened her eyes and stared back at him. Her eyes were a liquid-blue, as if they might melt out of her head at any moment, and she said nothing as they watched each other. "Hey," Danny said eventually, kneeling down where he was and holding out his hand. She stared at it too, her small face blank of expression until he dropped it back into his lap. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise."

Her mouth opened and she let out a small squeak.

"Yeah, you're safe here," he reassured her. 

She sat up slowly, cupped her hands around something on her shoulder and bent her head down to it. A small glow escaped her hands, and she looked back up at him, eyes narrowing quickly, her pupils constricting into slits.

Danny smiled. "Seriously, you're safe here. If you want, I'll even leave the room. I want to eat, anyway, and Vlad gets weird about people eating over his carpets." he watched as she nudged one of her brothers, her other hand still curled protectively over whatever it was she was holding. As he stood up, she stared at him, unblinking, none of the others moving in reaction to her prodding. "Alright?" he asked, watched them breathe. "I think they're still sleeping, and they might need to stay that way for a while."

He walked backwards, hands still held in the air as he moved away from her. 

When he reached the kitchen door and slid inside, the room was still empty. He got to work pulling out pans and dishes, pulling together some semblance of a decent meal.

As a result, he nearly missed the quiet footsteps of a small child walking into the room.

One moment, he was alone in the kitchen, and the next she was standing there, her hands cupped together in front of her and her eyes pinned on him. "Hey, you decided to follow me. Do you want food too?" he held up the box of pancake mix, shaking it slightly. "I have time before I have to head into work, and I wanted to make food anyways."

She shook her head and looked down at her hands.

"Alright, just let me know if you change your mind, alri- Oh, hey." he looked down as she tugged on the hem of his shirt, extending her arms in a way that meant she wanted to be picked up.

Leaning down and hoisting her up was no problem, and Danny smiled as he settled her on his hip. "Is that what you wanted?" When she nodded, he jiggled her slightly, laughing when she giggled, her shoulder length black hair bouncing with the movement. "There we go!" he shifted her just enough to resettle his grip. "What should I call you? I mean, I could just call you 'little girl' or 'she', but neither of those really suit anyone for a name."

She seemed to think about that for a minute, frowning as her little hands stayed curled close to her chest. When she finally opened her mouth, a stuttered little girl voice came out, and she frowned about it. "I-I-I-I wa-wan-want-" she trailed off on a frustrated noise.

"Hey, don't rush yourself, you'll get it." Danny tapped the tip of her nose. "Try just saying the name?"

"D-Dan-" she took a deep breath, then tried again. "Dana!"

"Alright Dana, nice to meet you." he poured some batter into the pan. "Are you sure you don't want pancakes?"

She thought about it this time, her small mouth pulled down at the edges in a frown, her hands still clasped together loosely in front of her chest. When whatever she was holding glowed softly, she looked down and held her hands closer to her ear, nodding at whatever she was holding. "E-ees!" she squeaked.

"Is that another one of your brothers?" Danny asked, forcing the smile to stay on his face despite the shock he was feeling.

When she nodded again and opened her hands a little, he saw a small figure, about the size of a doll, curled up between her fingers. The smallest of the clones looked up at Danny, mouth seeming to move but no discernable noise coming out of it. 

"Alright." Danny gestured back to the pan. "Should I make smaller ones for him?"

Dana made a pterodactyl-like noise and grinned, two teeth that were as long and as sharp as Plasmius's fangs hanging over the edge of her bottom lip. Taking it as laughter, Danny laughed as well, reaching forward to ruffle her hair. "Alright, food for everyone it is. When it gets closer to time for me to go, I may have to hand off the duty to someone else, but I'll stick around as long as I can, okay?"

Both of them nodded, Dana's head snapping to one side as footsteps approached the kitchen.

From that angle, Danny could see the shape of her nose, the bridge of it unmistakeably Vlad's in origin, and it made his heart ache for something he couldn't name. When he looked past her, he spotted Dan, the mostly-ghost scratching at his jaw and yawning in a jaw cracking sort of way. "Morning."

"Grmph..." Dan grumbled, his forward motion paused when he spotted the girl on Danny's hip. "...This is one of them, right?"

"Technically your little sister, yeah." Danny wiggled her gently, trying to get her to smile again. "Her name is Dana. Haven't figured out what the smaller one's name is yet, but right now we're making pancakes."

"Smaller one?" 

Danny gestured at the smallest, who had flitted out of Dana's hands and onto her shoulder. "He's small, but he's one of the group."

Shuffling forward, Dan leaned in closer to get a better look at his littlest 'brother'. "Ask the frootloop how he made one this small? Even with homemade equipment, there has got to be no way to mess up badly enough on a clone to make it this tiny."

"Dan, be nice."

Dan rolled his eyes. "You know me, there is no 'nice' when it comes to how I act."

"Should I try to train it in? I've heard that spray bottles work wonders." Danny snarked back, grinning when Dana laughed again. "Besides, I think Clockwork might disagree."

"...Maybe." Dan made a face, shrugging. "Or he might admit that he's just as bad about being 'nice' as I am. Face it, Danny, there is no such thing as a good mood for either me or him, especially not in the morning." he tapped the tip of Dana's nose. "And her nose is exactly like mine. How did you figure out her name?"

"She told me." Danny turned back to the stove, continuing with breakfast. "And I think the first thing I want to do is make sure she can communicate with us."

Whatever Dan was going to say next was cut off by a stream of green fire, the same color as his skin usually was, trailing across the floor and forming into a humanoid approximation next to Dana and Danny. "Do you know what this one is named?" he eventually asked, eyes wide.

"You could ask," Danny grinned, flipping a pancake. "They're your siblings."

"His name's Darren." came another voice, gruff and similar to Dan's. The people in the room turned to look at the door, where the last two clone children stood. One of them was wrapped in a sheet, entirely covered by it, and the one who seemed to have spoken was thickly built, resembling Jack more than anything. The stitches across his forehead wrinkled, and he shook his head. "I'm Dawyn. I don't-" he swallowed, suddenly nervous under all the attention. "I don't remember how we got our names, but they're just kind of ours?"

He rubbed at his arm, then gestured to the brother standing next to him. "This is Daven. The girl is Dana, and the smallest is Damien." The sheet drifted down for a second, revealing a pair of bright red eyes and a flash of bone before it was pulled back up. 

"I was told that you guys would be told what was going on," Danny turned to look at Daven, tilting his head to one side before leaning down and setting Dana back on her own feet. "Is that right?"

"Y-yeah." Dawyn shrugged, his brow crinkling weirdly around the stitched together flesh. "The purple ghost, the one with the clocks, he told us what was going to be happening, and that we-" he cut himself off, biting at his lip and curling as small as he could go. "The rest of them can't really talk. Daven can manage a few words here and there, but he and Dana shar-re kind of the same vocal weirdness."

The clone made of fiery-ice slid across the room to reach Dawyn again, holding a hand-shaped flame out to him. When Dawyn held his own hand out, Darren pressed into it, holding the contact for a few seconds before letting go. "Darren says that he is glad you're not attacking us now and that we aren't attacking you."

"Telepathic connection?" Dan guessed, stepping back towards them and studying them carefully from a few feet away. 

"Y-yeah."

"No need to be scared, child," Dan smirked. "It's been over a decade since I was off a leash of some kind."

"I really don't think you need to be discussing what you and Clockwork get up to when you're together." Danny mockingly scolded, grinning when the other male flushed a bright green color and pinned him with a bewildered stare.

 

XxXxX

 

He could hear them downstairs, the entire group of them. 

Daniel was probably using as much of the kitchen as he possibly could before heading off to work, and he could identify Dan's voice, and the other voice was most likely one of the clones. 

Vlad pressed a hand to his forehead as he listened to them, pressing the back of his head against the wall firmly, his eyes sliding shut as he took it all in. Downstairs were the children that he had created, a group of people with their own thoughts and feelings and mental states that an idiotic man had tried to manipulate to create the perfect child.  
The perfect son.

More than a decade later and he was finally reaching some semblance of happiness, some sort of family that filled in all the little cracks and breaks in his mind. Downstairs was the family he could have if he could just make himself get up and go to see them.

They were a possibility that he had never accounted for.

What was stranger, even, was that the longer he spent in his own home with Daniel and Dan and Danielle, the more time he spent around what had once been the only other of his kind, the more he wanted to spend time with the hero. Daniel was becoming far too important to him, far too able to wreck him if things turned sour between them.

The wreckage of his feelings for Maddie stirred, subtly changed, in his mind.

And there was the truth of it.

Daniel was someone new to love, someone he could see himself in love with if he just tried, but he wasn't sure if it was adoration brought about by awareness of how much his life had changed because of the boy or if it was well and truly an emotional connection of a healthy sort.

Sighing, Vlad picked up his phone from the bedside table, glancing at the time before dialling Doctor Yannak's office.

This would require a second opinion.

 

XxXxX

 

Danny set the plate of pancakes on the table, gesturing for everyone to sit down. "Alright guys, I have about half an hour before I have to get to work, dig in."

While they did that, he settled Dana into a chair of her own, making sure that she wasn't going to fall out of it before he did so. A few heavier steps on the stairs made him turn, and he smiled. "Good morning," he called out to Wilson and William as they made their way into the room, the smaller of the two rubbing tiredly at his eyes. "So these guys are a little hard to explain, but there is a reason for them being here."

"...Why do they all look somewhat like you?" Wilson asked, a frown on his lips. 

"Because William's nephew went a little crazy about a decade back and they're the result, along with Danielle." Danny slouched in his chair and pushed two out from the other side for them. "I made pancakes and fed them, didn't really know what else to do."

Wilson sat down first, looking back at his lover before smiling. "We've already had something of an interesting morning, this won't make it any stranger."

"This is true." William leaned down to kiss the top of his head. "I am, however, going to make coffee and tea before I sit down. Or, if there is already coffee, I am going to pour a cup of it for you before I sit down."

Dana watched the two of them interacting, then make a soft squeaking noise as she turned to Danny. 

"That's Vlad's uncle and his partner," Danny explained. "They're a little odd too, just like the rest of us." he gestured to Dan, smiling when she looked to him. "Technically he's your big brother-"

"Thank you ever so much for that." Dan grumbled.

"-And I guess I'm a dad?" he frowned for a moment. "Technically they're my kids, so I guess I'm a dad of...Seven? Wow, that's an early morning wake up call." he looked at Dan, a thoughtful expression on his face as he studied the partial-ghost. "I mean..."

"Are you counting Danielle and me in that number?" Dan asked, one eyebrow raised. "And if so, why?"

"Because I'm older than you," Danny grinned at him.

Dan made a face, leaning an elbow on the table as he looked at him. "No you're not, physically, I'm twenty-two. Physically, you're-"

"Twenty-four. It's only been in the last year or so that I've stopped ageing physically." Danny's grin grew bigger as he leaned his chin into his hand. "So yeah. I'm older. It's a little bit of an achievement and a bit of a bragging right."

"You're starting to be a bit more like me as you get older." Dan drawled, propping his chin up in his hand as he stared at the Halfa. "Stop it, it's disturbing."

"I think it's more that you're a lot like me. I mean, technically, I am older than you." Danny sighed, still sort of smiling. "...I should have realized about Vlad's age way earlier. I mean..." he gestured between himself and the ghost. "Your age averaged out between mine and his. He's twenty-seven, was twenty-seven when I was fourteen..."

With a snort, Dan rolled his eyes. "Child to children, I swear..." he grumbled, turning when he heard footsteps towards the room. "Vlad."

William inclined his chin at his nephew, smiling softly. "Is everything alright?" 

"Quite." Vlad's voice was rough, like he was trying to wrangle his emotions into check as he spoke. "This is them, then?" he gestured at the clones, settling into the chair Danny pushed out, not even realizing that the younger Halfa had seated them next to each other. "Do they have names?"

Danny laughed. "Yeah. They've got names, and I think someone may be messing with us. Dawyn, Daven, Dana, Damien, Darren, and then there's the original three, meaning me, Dan, and Danielle." he shook his head, glaring at Dan when he chuckled darkly, standing up to grab Vlad a mug of coffee and a plate, as well as utensils. "I have to head into work," he paused, setting the dishes gently down in front of the older male. "Your turn. Tag team parenting, I guess."

"I would guess so." Vlad blinked, looking around at the faces that surrounded him. 

"Don't worry," William reassured him, "We're not going to be leaving you alone in this venture."

Vlad's eyes were a little shell-shocked as he mouthed a quiet 'Thank you' at his uncle.


	2. Always Makes You a Fool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> William Carter has a nightmare and a dream, in that order.
> 
> Of course it's not over yet.
> 
> (In which information is gained and stories are told.)

There was something desperately wrong with the world that surrounded him, the walls a shade too dark and the ceiling was a hair too high and the shadows that wound around his feet was too clutching, oppressive and dangerous in a way they hadn't been in forever.

Feeling like a drowned man without hope of ever seeing the surface again, William clutches his own throat, tries to press two fingers to his pulse and take deep, even breaths. Wilson is gone from his familiar spot on their shared bed, even though the clock on the wall and the one on the bedside agree that it's far too late for him to be alone in the mess of blankets and pillows, far too early for even the impatient scientist to have gotten up and gone down to the lab. His lover is missing from the room and everything about it is wrong, it all seems-

Oh lord.

His throat clicks, dry and painful when he swallows nervously. Knowing what he'll see, even before he looks down to his wrists, William grits his teeth as he does and sees the manacles of shadow, the ones that had trapped him for so long on the Throne.

"This must be a dream." he whispers, clearing his throat, wincing at the angry sensation of dry skin scraping dry skin, screaming for water. 

Around his feet, the shadows thicken and he nearly panics when the blackness of them swarms up around his hands, forcing its way underneath all of his nails, causing him to shout when the nailbeds crack apart and claws form from the wreckage. They look more like the claws that Wilson had in his brief tenure as the king of the Throne than the ones that William had ever had as Maxwell. 

"Do you honestly think that this is all a dream?" a familiar voice echoed through the room, an invisible hand forcing him to turn towards the source. A perfectly polished pair of black shoes shone in the darkness when he forced his gaze down, and that did nothing to settle the unease in his chest. The pinstripe suit that the being in front of him wore didn't make anything better either, a fur-trimmed coat billowing out around the man. "You can't be that stupid."

William shook his head slowly, peering through glasses that he didn't remember putting on in the first place. "I am that hopeful."

"You're pathetic." the man pulled a cigar out of nowhere, somehow managing to light it with a snap of his fingers, thick lips curling into a dangerous smirk as smoke floated around his head. His eyes were dark, but they looked otherwise normal, his slick hair creating an almost death-like visage as he stared William down. 

He had never realized how menacing he'd looked from the outside when he'd been Maxwell.

Taking a deep breath, William did his best to stand strong in front of the creature he had been. "I may be pathetic in your eyes, but I am a better man for being who I am now." 

"A 'better man'?" the other parroted at him, scowling around the end of his cigar. "A better man would not have done what you did in the first place. Do you think that you deserve forgiveness for what you have done? You tricked poor Wilson down into your kingdom, forced the pomegranate seeds into his mouth and kept him." he blew a ring of smoke out one side of his mouth. 

William drew himself up, waving away the smoke when it seemed to reach for him. "Wilson is not Persephone, and even if he was, do you think that myth is anything but a Queen creating her own place in the world?" he swallowed. "She ate the seeds willingly, took what was given to her and made her own crown."

A moment of silence passed between the two of them.

Blinking as he thought over what he had just said, William smiled. "Perhaps Wilson is Persephone. The true ruler of the Underworld, when I read the stories, seems to have been the acquired bride of Hades."

Maxwell watches him carefully for a moment, cigar held off to one side as he studies William. "Perhaps." he allows, going back to sucking on the end of it.

Twin spots of warmth land on William's shoulders and the world goes off kilter for a moment, as if the very foundations of it are shaking. "I assume we shall speak again at a later date." William addressed what may as well have been his twin. 

"You assume correctly. I am not your shadow, not the treacherous being that clung to both of you." Maxwell sat on a chair that appeared out of nothingness, crossing his legs and leaning back in it. "We are the same person, you and I, but you must find out the proper name for me."

The colors around them faded a little as William nodded. "I must."

He blinked out of the space.

 

"William?" Wilson called softly, one knee curled beneath him as he leaned forward to press fingers against his pulse. "William, please wake up."

The larger male groaned in his sleep, tensing up for a moment beneath his hands, then swallowed and rubbed at his eyes. "What time is it?" he grumbled the words out, voice thick with sleep. "Have I overslept for something?"

"You were muttering in your sleep." Wilson bit his lip. "When I heard the word 'shadow', I may have overreacted to it. It's only three in the morning." he studied William's face. "I am sorry for overreacting, but considering what it is that we have gone through thus far in the time we've known each other, I would think that it's a decent reaction."

William smiled, rubbing one knuckle over the bridge of his nose before holding out his arm. Looking pointedly at the smaller man and the empty space between his arm and his side, William's cheeks flushed dark, amusement in his still-tired eyes. "That is a very fair point. I suspect, however, that the both of us would benefit from at least a few more hours of sleep." when Wilson lay against him, he wrapped his free arm around him, drawing him even closer. "There are things that must be done, and I suspect that there is someone in my mind who wishes to speak with me."

"Who?"

"I do not know quite what to call him now that I am not him." William began slowly, drawing his fingers through Wilson's hair. 

Wilson nodded, shoving his face into the fabric of William's sleepshirt. "Just be careful," he whispered. "Should I presume that you should stay asleep to speak with him? I don't think that anyone would say anything about you sleeping through tomorrow, you've got nearly a century of sleep to catch up on, after all."

"I think I might as well." William leaned down, pressing a kiss against the top of Wilson's head. "Thank you."

"Just don't-" Wilson's words disappeared into a yawn as he curled his fingers into William's side. "Just don't stay there." 

Before William could say anything else to him, his breathing had evened out, apparently exhausted once more now that his worry had been washed away by the sight of William rejoining the waking world.

Closing his eyes, William joined him.

 

Only to open his eyes back in the world he had been pulled from by his waking.

From behind him, he could hear someone humming something, a soft melody that he faintly recognized. In front of him was the form of Wolfgang, the strongman's outfit sweat-soaked in the afternoon sun.

"Hello, friend!" he called, walking closer and holding out his hand. "Friend William has been gone for a while, was not sure if would return."  
William smiled at him. "This is not a memory."

"Is not. Is something new." Wolfgang pulled him to his feet, brushing off the shimmering fabric of his waistcoat. "Friend Wes is practicing, lacks other things to do." he looked behind William, his eyes tracking the movement of something back there. "Is pretty lady friend, wishes to speak to you, da?"

"Pretty lady-"

 _"Say pal, you don't look so good,"_ came a soft voice from the direction Wolfgang was looking. The words were being sung, and he remembered what came next. 

"I'm starting to think-"

 _"That maybe I should,_ " came the response, and he could practically feel the smile twisting her lips. _"Listen to the words my mama gave me,"_

"What is it you ask," unlike her, he wasn't singing. He couldn't hold a tune in a bucket, would probably make even the nicest person shriek in horror at the sound of his singing voice. 'Tone deaf' was what his nephew had called it, he thought. But this was her song, the song she had written, the song he had remembered enough of to quote it at Wilson.

 _"Now don't you know baby?"_ she sung sweetly. _"Kissin' in the dark always makes you a fool,"_

He felt arms wrap around his waist from behind, her forehead pressing into his back. _"And I'm just a fool for you."_ she finished. "Hello, William." When he pulled away, meeting her eyes, she looked just the same as she had the last time he had seen her whole. 

"Charlie." he whispered, heart in his throat as he took her by the elbows. 

She smiled, the dusting of freckles across her cheeks making his heart ache in his chest. "How's your new fella?" she asked, taking her arms back, folding her hands together in front of her. "He isn't the King anymore, I know that much." she gestured to one side with her chin. "Take a walk with me?"

"Of course." William swallowed, forcing the tears he could feel welling up back down. "Are you well?"

Charlie laughed. "You always did think of others before yourself, Will." she put her hand on his elbow, falling into an older set of habits from their original days. "I found out what happened when they took us there. It's really not your fault, you know."

"What did happen? I made a deal with them to save you, to save everyone." William looked around, frowning at the woods. "This looks like the area we stayed in the night before the wreck."

"It's an imitation, made from our memories. None of us could remember what home looked like, so we pulled together this place." Charlie sighed, sadness in her eyes as she looked around as well. "If we keep walking, we'll end up back in the camp. As for what happened..." she pulled away from him, settling herself on a tree stump, tucking her skirt underneath her. "When the crash happened, I was injured, you were panicking about it."

William sat down on a log across from her. "Of course I panicked, you were bleeding. You were going to die."

"You were too."

He paused, settling his long limbs. "...What?"

"You were bleeding on the inside." Charlie leaned over to put her hand on his knee. "You didn't know it, but you were already dead, Will." her eyes were watery, and she swiped a hand across them. "That's why they were panicking as well. The need a new King every few centuries, otherwise they get all ripped apart in their damned web!" She made a face, her eyes glowing for a second like they had when she was the Grue. 

"I'm sorry." she whispered.

"It is alright." 

"What they were doin' isn't alright. They wanted you to be their new puppet, made you think that you were in charge when you weren't." she rubbed a thumb against her palm, massaging the muscles in her hand. "When you started acting up, they made it a compulsion to find a new one to replace you. You weren't gonna act like they wanted you to, so they wanted you gone." 

William chuckled. "That seems to have gone wrong for them."

"I don't think that we ever made as good a couple as you two do." Charlie laughed as well. "I had their secrets being whispered in my head all those years, and now I know things that no one else should know about them."

"Do you know who they are?"

Charlie nodded. "It's a family, and there's four of them. When they can't get somethin' done on their own, then they recruit others. You know anythin' about a guy who calls himself Rewind?"

"Rewind has been taken care of, almost at the cost of the lives of a few of the people I know now." William clenched his hand. "My nephew included."

"Oh!" her eyes lit up. "So you did find him!"

“I did,” William smiled, putting his hands on his knees and leaning into the pose, thinking for a moment. “Did…Are you…”

“I’m fine,” Charlie reached over and took his face in her hands, brushing away the building tears. “Your fella and you, you’re going to have a good life together. I won’t lie, I’m a little jealous,” she grinned, pulling one hand back and holding it up, pinching two fingers almost together. “Just a smidge. You chose me a pretty ring and you were ever so good with your words once you managed to get them out. We would have been good too, but it just didn’t work out that way. I’ll still be…Well, we’ve got to move on soon, but for at least a little bit, I can be here to help you. I love you, William, and nothin’ is ever gonna change that.” She brushed some hair out of his face. “But Wilson loves you too, and you love him.”

“I love you as well,” he spoke up after a moment. “But I…”

“Too painful,” she patted his cheek. “Sometimes that’s what love is. Painful and sad, the sort of thing you look at and go, ‘We just met at the wrong time’. If we’d met later, we wouldn’t have been the way we were. I don’t think I would have trusted you. Earlier wouldn’t have worked either because you wouldn’t have been able to talk to me without stuttering, and I would have thought you were weird.”

William snorted out a laugh, still hunched over and letting her hold onto him. “And Wilson is…He isn’t replacing you. We bonded through the things we went through together, the horrible situations we were pushed into. It’s a different sort of love.”

“We were younger and excited,” Charlie nodded. “Now you’re all set in your ways and older, settled. I don’t think our marriage would have lasted happily. Too caught up in the moment, we were, too ignorant of the way the world was going to react to us. I guess our moment, the dance we should have had, just wasn’t meant to be seen on stage.”

Taking her wrists in his hands, his thumbs over where her pulse should have been, the throb of her heartbeat absent, William sighed. “I suppose this is just the wrong universe for us. I am glad I get to say goodbye to you again, however.”

“Yeah,” Charlie nodded, tears forming in her own eyes. “I need to tell you somethin’ now, and I think we’re runnin’ out of time. You made a deal for powers, he made a deal for knowledge. Ain’t occurred to you yet, right? Both of ya kept the things you asked for.” She looked over her shoulder, watching the trees as if she expected someone to come running out of them. “The Shadow, the one that nearly killed the both of you.”

“Yes?”

“He’s part of a family. There’s four of them, older than the sort of magic you know, William. There are two daughters and two sons, a family of four children in total and one remaining parent. I don’t know what happened with the other parent, but the remaining five of the family are awful enough without them. One of them, she’s just about the worst sort I ever heard of, goes by the name Penelope. And your nephew, your nephew was damaged by her. I’ve been looking where I can, trying to find things out so that I could tell you,” she hesitated for a moment, frowning as she bit her lip. “There has been someone helpin’ me, a real sweetheart, reminds me of one o’ the guys you got in your corner.”

“What do you mean she damaged my nephew?”

“He got stuck in a hospital for years, William,” Charlie shook her head, cutting him off before he could speak. “She cut him off from his friends and the folks who could help him, made him feel alone in the world. She's up to something still, still trying to get her way in the world. One of the sons is captive right now, held by the people who used to try to boss my informant around.”

Charlie made him drop her hands, stumbling away from the stump. “I have to go now, _you_ have to go now,” she smiled at him. “And if you can do me one last favor,” she waited until he came to stand next to her before hugging him tightly. “Make sure no one ever stumbles through that goddamn gate ever again, not even by accident. Bury it and make Them suffer.”

She pulled away again, shoving him bodily into the trees.

 

William woke up with tears streaming down his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Is anyone even still waiting for this to update?


	3. And Yet Impossible

A week later, it was hard to find Vlad anywhere in the mansion without also finding Dana, and by extension, Damien. 

The two smallest had attached themselves to the older Halfa and clung on too tightly to be removed by any force except exhaustion. Unless Vlad himself told them to stay somewhere, it was almost impossible to see the three separated. There were times when Vlad would order them away, tell them to stay away for their own safety, but for the most part, he was content to have them follow his every move.

If he were going into his labs, they were to stay out. It had been the first rule established in their strange little movements around the house.

The first time Dana had tried to follow him into his labs, Vlad had nearly broken down in panic, shielding her from the door. His eyes flashing red, he'd stepped away, looking helplessly at Danny. "Badger," he said quietly, pleading with his eyes for a moment. "I-"

"Hey, Dana," Danny came to his rescue, brushing a hand over his shoulder and smiling at him. "Why don't we go watch a movie or something? You can hang out with Vlad later. I think he needs a few minutes to calm down." he picked her up when she held out her arms, hefting the small body against his shoulder and petting at her hair. "Do you want to watch the animated zoo animals or the one about the robot?"

"Bobot!" she shrieked, throwing her hands into the air. 

Damien flitted excitedly around her head, his incomprehensible voice chittering away in the air. With one last loop upside down, he finally settled on Dana's shoulder, hugging his sister's neck. 

"Alright you two," Danny grinned, adjusting them slightly. "Time for a movie!"

He looked over his shoulder at Vlad, jerking his head towards the lab, nodding when the older Halfa motioned at it questioningly. "Who wants a snack with their movie?"

"Me!" Dana managed, her small hands clasped together in front of her.

Patting her back, Danny headed for the kitchen, looking back once more to see Vlad slip through the door into his lab. With a small sigh and a bit of laughter, he headed into the kitchen with their daughter on his hip.

 

In his lab, Vlad leaned back against the door and let his head fall back to land against it with a heavy thud.

“Ow,” he grumbled quietly, covering his face. Behind the shield of his hands, he could just about think of the domesticity of the image Daniel had presented. A little girl in his arms, clinging to him and sitting on his hip, the younger Halfa himself tousled and barefoot. It shouldn’t have been as exciting as it was to see it, it should have been an oddity and abnormal and out of place and yet-

Daniel had, somewhere along the way, become part of the household.

It was hard to decide what was worse, however. Daniel worming his way into Vlad’s life or the younger Halfa being oddly…Attractive. Vlad growled, a subsonic rumble of annoyance before he pushed himself away from the door and almost went tumbling down the staircase. “Damn it to hell and back!” he hissed. “A child! Daniel is a child, the child of your former best friends, this is no way to go about life!”

He stomped over to a table, grabbing a pad of paper and a pen, flipping through it until he found notes he had previously written. “…Was a child when you met him,” he grumbled. “Is an adult now, but is still so much younger than you, what are you even thinking?” he growled again, his hands shaking from how tightly he was holding the pen and paper. “You are the worst sort for even thinking it, what are you doing with your life?”

The papers in his hands charred at the edges and he tossed them back down. 

“Disgusting old man that you are,” Vlad sighed, covering his face with his hands. “There are children in this house. Even if Daniel is not one of them anymore, he is still so much younger than you.”  
He dropped into the chair in front of the lab table, still somewhat dented from Rewind’s attacks. Running his thumb over one of the marks, Vlad frowned. “And he probably would not want anything to do with you. He is intelligent, much like his mother. He stays to make things easier, on himself and now on the children. College is…” he dropped his head to the surface, pressing his hands into the sides of his head and groaning. “There are so many reasons that even entertaining these thoughts is a bad idea.”

For a moment, Vlad paused, lifting his head up and removing his glasses before letting his forehead land back on the table. 

“The worst possible idea you’ve ever had,” he groaned. “Possibly even worse than the one you thought of when you were out of your mind that one night. Taking over the world, become supreme leader, then they have to listen to you,” he mocked himself, scrunching up his face, pitching the tone of his voice up to a nasal whine. Returning it to normal, he snorted. “Really, this…Well, no, I don’t think anything in the world could be worse than that idea.”

Standing up and moving across the lab, Vlad put his glasses back on and pulled a rolling cart full of parts into the open space in the middle of the floor. With that done, he pulled off his button-up shirt and smoothed a hand down the front of his undershirt. It was black cotton, something he didn’t mind ruining if anything happened, and he scoffed at the thick denim pants he wore. “Though Daniel does have some good ideas about work clothes.”

Approaching the portal and setting his shirt to the side, Vlad frowned at it.

Whatever Rewind had done; however he had changed it, it was still altered and unable to be used. It would make things easier on everyone if it could be fixed. Dan would be able to visit with ease, coming to see his younger siblings. He had grown fond of them, Vlad knew, settling in to swap out a few pieces of the portal, including the filtration unit. Somehow they had settled into something like an actual family. On days when Vlad was home, he tutored the children himself, taught them how to write and read. It felt like he was actually their father at times, and he almost wanted to cry because he had a family.

He wouldn’t have children any other way, Daniel had been right.

A trip to his doctor had confirmed the sterilization that had occurred because of him turning into a Halfa. Completely sterile, unable to have children any other way besides the way he had achieved it. His cells were in a constant state of dying and living, switching between the two like someone flipping the lights on and off.

He was Vlad Masters, supposedly age forty-six, and his body betrayed him and told anyone looking properly that he was in his late twenties. He would never have children unless he cloned them and he would never grow any older. He had spent eight years dying, the one other person like him had spent nine years doing the same. 

Perhaps it was time to come to terms with that.

Maybe he could find peace with it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vlad has Issues™


	4. Freefall

“Vlad’s acting weird.”

There was a pause on the other end of the call as Sam turned that sentence over in her head. Danny could almost see her blinking, once, twice, then narrowing her eyes at the phone before putting it back to her ear. “Vlad’s always acting weird, Danny. We’ve known him since we were fourteen. He has never _not_ been weird.”

“No,” Danny sighed, flopping down on the bed he had claimed as his. It was Spring break, he had two weeks to be in Vlad’s manor every day to look after the clone-kids. “I mean, weirder than usual. And there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know, Sam. A lot of stuff I…I can’t explain over the phone.”

“I know,” she was rolling her eyes, he knew she was. “You’ve told me that a lot, Danny. Since that thing a couple of weeks ago, with Rewind or whatever.”

Picking at the edge of the blanket, Danny hummed in response. “He’s just…Different, now.”

“Different how? He always wanted us either dead or on his side, you’re going to try and tell me that’s changed?” Sam made an unhappy noise. “Wait, just a second. Tucker came in and asked me who I was talking to. Speaker alright?”

“Yeah.”

He could hear the faint echo of the system she was using switching into speaker mode and he laughed when he heard Tucker saying, “I didn’t mean put whoever it is on speaker, I just wanted to know who you were talking to!”

“Hey Tuck!” Danny said, grinning. “Aren’t you guys sad you didn’t come with me back to Amity Park for Spring Break.”

Tucker’s laugh was a welcome change from the somewhat cold tone Sam had been speaking with. “Hey Danny. And also, not a chance. How’re things holdin’ up in the Masters’ Mansion of Terror?” he could hear the other shifting, probably sitting down with Sam and getting comfortable. “Or are you at your parents’ house right now?”

“Vlad’s place. And like I was telling Sam, he’s being weird lately.”

“Oh?” Tucker’s raised eyebrow was almost audible. “Danny, since when has Vlad been anything but weird?” his question came with the background noise of Sam muttering, “That’s what I was asking.”

“Guys, it’s a different kind of weird. I mean, with the kids, he’s kind of-”

“Wait, wait, what?” Tucker’s voice came closer. “Since when did Vlad have kids? And even more than that, why does it sound like you’re referring to them as _your_ kids? Danny, what exactly is happening there?”

“You remember the clones of me, right?”

“Right,” Tucker confirmed. “Dani and everything. They melted away at the end of the day, hero wins, Vlad loses, his evil plot halted. Yay heroics. But what do the clones have to do with _Vlad Masters_ having _kids_?”

Danny sighed again, rolling over to flop onto his back. “There’s a thing with Clockwork, stabilizing the timeline, putting everything back together and making it all keep working…Anyway. The clones had to brought forward to a different point in time to fix the unstable paradox Vlad had created by making them in the first place. You remember-” he hesitated, thinking of the last fight he and Sam had before they’d broken up. She’d wanted kids, had been upset when they found out it would never happen. They’d just barely kept their friendship intact in the aftermath. “The thing with me.”

“…Yeah,” Sam spoke up, her voice strangely quiet. “I remember.”

“It turns out it’s true for Vlad, too. There was a paradox created by _that_ and him having created what could technically be called his children. They existed at too many points, they were going to be here and now anyway,” Danny shook his head. “It’s a whole big situation. I’m staying in his mansion to watch over the kids for a bit and be closer to them. When break is over, I’ll try and visit as often as I can. Hopefully, I can get Vlad to teach me teleporting or something, because his portal is still not working.”

“Right, right,” Sam answered him again. “Rewind, right?”

Tucker snorted. “I remember you telling us about that. Rewind made it solid or whatever?”

“Yeah. Vlad’s been working on getting it fixed so it’s usable again.”

“Considering how he used it when we were younger, are we sure it’s a good idea to let him do that now?” Sam sighed and Tucker groaned. “I mean…Danny, you’re in the middle of his house right now. He could be controlling you somehow, making you think the best of him and everything.”

“Sam.” Tucker’s voice almost cut over the end of her sentence.

“What? I’m just saying, Vlad could be up to no good, _like he always is_ , and Danny’s right in the middle of it all!”

“Sam,” Danny paused, waiting. He could hear them bickering and he wanted to end the call right then. “Sam!”

“What?”

“Do me a favor.” Danny covered his face with his free hand. “Look up William Carter for me. Tell me what you find when you do.”

He could hear clicking and tapping, Sam’s fingers practically flying over her keyboard as she did what he’d asked. “Okay, so…Huh. William Carter was a stage magician. Some renown, looks like he died in a train crash in nineteen-oh-five.” A pause. “Danny, why am I looking up a magician from over a century ago? Did you need his stage name? It’s Maxwell, if that’s what you needed. Maxwell the Great! This is neat and all, why am I looking at it.”

“Okay,” Danny shrugged. “Now look up Wilson Higgsbury.”

“…You gonna tell us why, Danny?”

“In a minute. Just look him up.”

“Okay, so, amateur scientist, went missing in nineteen-twenty. Again, why am I looking at this?” Sam sighed and Danny knew she was covering her face. “Danny, seriously. You’re in the middle of-”

“William Carter is Vlad’s uncle. Well, great-uncle, but still. Wilson Higgsbury is William Carter’s partner. Sam,” Danny adjusted a little, putting his feet flat on the bed. “They’re both currently downstairs. I think Wilson’s in the lab, helping Vlad figure out how to fix the portal. William’s probably watching over the kids right now, with the help of my mom.”

“…And with that,” Sam’s sentence trailed for a moment. “I’m looking up tickets to get back to Amity Park _right now._ ”

“Aw man,” Tucker’s voice was a whine. “But I like it here!”

“Shut it, Tucker, there are more important things going on than a beach vacation I didn’t even want to go on in the first place.” Danny could hear Sam typing. “Danny? We’ll be there tomorrow. I hope Vlad can deal with having more guests at the mansion. He’s not getting a choice in the matter.”

“Sam-”

“Tucker, I said shut it. Go pack your stuff, we’re leaving now.”

 

XxXxX

 

Vlad rubbed blearily at his face, blinking a couple of times at the people standing at his front door.

“Miss Manson,” he turned to look at the other, blinking some more. “Mister Foley, I presume?” Vlad yawned, opening the door wider and turning back around to head to the kitchen. “Both of you can come in.” he covered his mouth as he yawned again. “Do either of you want breakfast? It needs to be made for the children, so we might as well feed you at the same time.”

“Okay,” Tucker stepped into the house, setting his bags on the floor. Sam walked inside with more hesitance, doing the same and shutting the door after her. “So, who are you and what have you done with Vlad Masters?” the younger male demanded.

“What?” Vlad turned to look at him, then paused and pulled the glasses out of the collar of his shirt, unfolding them and putting them on.

“I think we’ve wandered into an alternate reality,” Sam muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. “There’s no way you’re the Vlad we know. No way.” Her face wrinkled in a confused sort of anger, distrustful and resentful. In many ways, she was still so much like her teenaged self. “The Vlad Masters we knew wouldn’t let us into his house without trying to kill us.”

“I think we’re dealing with a pod person,” Tucker muttered to her. “That’s not-”

“Pod person, what-” Vlad closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head to try and fend off the exhaustion. “It is too early for antics and whatever strange things you have planned, you two. Daniel should be awake in a few minutes if he isn’t already, so you can either come have breakfast or you can wait in the living room for him.” He paused, holding himself awkwardly as he tried to piece things together. “I need coffee.”

A small glowing thing flew through the air, settling on Vlad’s shoulder. “Oh,” he smiled faintly. “Good morning Damien. How are you doing?”

Tucker’s jaw dropped open and he reached back to grab Sam’s shoulder without being able to see it, missing a few times before he managed to drag her close to watch what he was watching. “Vlad Masters is smiling,” he whispered. “And it’s not a creepy smile. It’s like he’s actually happy.”

“What is going on here,” Sam whispered back. “Are we even in the right place? I could have sworn we were, but this is…”

“Weird?” Danny’s voice was right behind them and they both jumped, Tucker letting out a small, panicked, shriek. “Yeah. Welcome back to Amity Park, you two.” He hugged both of them tightly, then stood back. “Still happy about out of state colleges? Because this is what happens when you leave for a while. People change and sometimes it’s for the better.”

“Oh?” Sam raised an eyebrow at him, looking over her shoulder at where Vlad was still talking to the glowing shape. “So he’s got Tinkerbell on his shoulder and that’s better for him?”

“That’s the smallest clone,” Danny corrected her. “His name is Damien. If he’s awake, it means Dana probably is too. She comes across as the youngest, we’re guessing her age as about four years old, mentally. We don’t know if she’ll grow older than that or not. Damien seems to be about eight or nine? We’ve been trying to figure it out for a while now, how their ages were determined, but our best guess is that they were changing a lot and when the timeline was settled, they were pinned at the age they were at that moment.”

Danny turned when there were footsteps on the stairs, watching for a moment.

A tall man with dark hair and the same nose as Vlad walked into view, holding a little girl on his hip and practically cooing at her. “Good morning Daniel, Vlad,” he paused, an eyebrow raised as he sized up Sam and Tucker. “Newcomers.” He turned back to Danny. “Willow mentioned visiting sometime soon, probably in the next week or so. She and her father are coming into our state to get something done about her going back to college.”

“Oh, cool,” Danny looked at him, making a face. “You’re not going to hand me Dana, are you.”

“No, she’s fine with her great-grand-uncle,” the man jiggled her slightly, resulting in her giggling. When he turned back to look at Sam and Tucker again, he held out a hand. “William Carter. This,” he jiggled the little girl again. “Is Dana.”

Dana looked at Sam and Tucker, curling further into William’s side as she studied them intently.

“She’s…She looks a lot like Danny,” Sam managed at last. A flash of resentment crossed her face and she stepped back from William a little. “Danny has kids. Clone kids. This is so weird.”

“On second thought,” William handed Dana off to Danny, then waved Danny and Tucker off, motioning for them to follow Vlad. “You’re unhappy about something. Possibly about several somethings. Do you mind telling me what those things are?” he nudged his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, clasping his hands behind his back as he waited for her answer.

“I dated Danny for a while,” Sam muttered, looking away. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

William studied her, just as intently as Dana had. “You wanted children with him.”

“I wanted a life with him!” Sam shot back, suddenly angry, her shoulders tensed up. “We were dating and he was mine. I wanted to marry him and have kids with him and that can’t happen. I mean, we could still get married, but…We broke up almost two years ago, when we were both twenty-two.” She sighed, covering her face with her hands. “I just get jealous over him and now he’s got kids with his _archenemy._ It’s a little weird.”

“As far as I am aware, they have not been enemies for quite some time.”

“Yeah, well, Vlad’s still my enemy,” Sam bit the words out, setting her jaw and avoiding looking at him. “Danny’s had a crush on him since we were-” she stopped, looking up at William guiltily. “I mean…”

“So your hatred of my nephew is entirely based on his past actions and the feelings of one of your best friends.” William’s eyebrow rose again. “Hm. What was your name again?”

“Sam.”

“ _Sam_ ,” William parroted. “You seem entirely childish in my eyes. I am glad of the information. How would you feel if someone judged you for how you acted nearly ten years ago?”

“Oh, that would suck so much,” Sam made a face at him, her hands clenching into fists. “Ten years ago, I was still as smart as I am now but I didn’t know how to put it to use, so I think I should never be judged on it.” She made a sharp motion at the room the others had disappeared to. “Tucker and Danny finally grew up, thankfully. I was tired of always being the mature one.”

“I do not think you truly were,” William said after a moment. “You seem to be a spoiled child who somehow made it to adulthood with no one telling her ‘no’ when she demanded things.”

With that, he walked into the kitchen, leaving her in the front room.

 

“I may have insulted your friend,” William greeted Danny as he walked into the kitchen, grabbing a mug from the cupboard and filling it with coffee. “But in my defense, she was being predatory and jealous over you.”

“…We haven’t dated in years,” Danny made a face. “Why would she be jealous over me?”

“Dude,” Tucker snorted, perched on the edge of his chair and making silly faces at Dana, who was laughing. "She's still kind of…Not over you. It’s part of why she hasn’t dated anyone else since you broke up.” At Danny’s confused expression, he shrugged. “She and I hang out in bars sometimes and she tells me things when she’s drunk. She still has this weird possessive thing about you, like you’re always hers.”

“No and no,” Danny shook his head. “I’ll go talk to her.”

Tucker made a face, watching him go while he kept playing with Dana. “Okay, so…” he looked at Vlad and William, swallowing nervously. “Is anything bad going to happen to us here?”

“…Why would it?” William raised an eyebrow, then looked at Vlad. “What did you _do_ to them?”

“I did a great many stupid things,” Vlad made his own face, looking over at Tucker. “Things got complicated in between your teenage years and now. There is a whole story that has not been told and your friend Samantha is not going to like it.”

“Sam never really likes anything,” Tucker snorted. “She likes to pretend she’s as far from her parents as she can be, but she’s a lot like them.”

“Then why hang out with her?” William frowned.

“Because she’s our friend,” Tucker looked at him. “She has been for forever. Yeah, she’s a little intense sometimes, and yeah, sometimes I want to yell at her because she’s being stubborn, but…She’s one of us. Danny wanted to remain friends with her after their breakup and she didn’t handle it right, but she’s getting better, most of the time. Sam has seen us through so much bull-”

He hesitated, looking at Dana and then at Vlad. The Halfa was glaring at him, as if daring him to finish that sentence.

“-Stuff.” Tucker finished it lamely, a nervous smile on his face. “She got us through so much by being smart. Yeah, she probably should calm down some, and she should probably see a therapist for how much her parents messed her up, but she’s one of us.”

William had managed to put together a second mug, full of tea this time, as Tucker had been talking. “I will apologize to her later, then,” he headed towards the door that led away from where Sam still was. “For now, I must hope that she changes her ways. If she remains that obnoxious, I will do what I must to defend my family.”

With that, he was gone again.

 

 

“Sam?”

She was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. “I probably shouldn’t even be here.” She muttered.

“Sam, I’m always happy to see you,” Danny stopped in front of her and sighed, his hands tucked into his pockets. “You know that I am, you’re one of my best friends.”

“But I’m not your girlfriend.”

“Not anymore, Sam.”

“See, that just _sucks_ , so _much!”_ Sam looked up at him. “We were good, Danny. Together, I mean. Yeah, you couldn’t give me a family, but…” she bit her lip and shrugged. “I guess I could wait?”

Danny shook his head. “Sam, no. It’s not fair to either of us to have you waiting. You want kids, you want a family. And I’m not someone who can have that with you. We don’t know what my lifespan will be like and I am sterile. Find some other guy, someone who can make you happy.” He smiled sadly at her. “I’m not the one for you.”

“What if I want to wait?” Sam glanced at him again, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Sam.”

“I’m tired of this, Danny. You were the one I wanted a life with, damn it.” Sam sighed. “…I guess I am my parent’s daughter, huh?” she kicked the toe of her boot into the floor, glaring at the carpet like it had insulted her. “I don’t get my way and suddenly I act _exactly_ like them – Didn’t I make you promise to put me down if that happened?”

“I believe your exact words were, ‘take me out like those jackasses do to lame horses’, actually.” Danny grinned and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sam, I need you to stop waiting for me. I love you, you’re one of my best friends, but,” he hesitated, then met her eyes.

“But you’re not in love with me,” Sam sighed. The fight seemed to go out of her, her shoulders suddenly losing the tightness they had held since the breakup. “And you haven’t been for a _long_ time.”

Danny nodded, a miserable expression on his face. “Yeah.”

“So,” Sam leaned into a brief hug, then pulled away and punched his shoulder. “How is living in the house of the guy you had a crush on since before we started dating?”

With a snort, Danny doubled over, covering his face. His shoulders shook with silent laughter. Once he had gotten himself under control again, he stood back up and brushed his hair away from his face. “Pretty good, actually. Vlad is taking to being a father pretty well. Clockwork said something about chance and circumstance and alternate parade routes, so I think there is some _big_ thing we managed to avoid by having me and him in the same place, on the same side.” Danny grinned at her. “And I get to see Vlad dressed in clothing besides suits and the weird tie-thing he always wore when we were teenagers.”

“So how’s the butt situation looking?” Sam grinned when Danny’s cheeks _immediately_ flushed a bright red.

“…Good,” Danny muttered.

“Hah!” Sam laughed a little, shaking her head. “…I’m glad we can stay friends,” she said quietly. “I’m going to need a bit, to get my head together and stop acting like my parents’ daughter, but I really do enjoy having you as a friend. Don’t know what I’d do if I lost that,” she sighed. “That being said, I will probably say some things that are stupid and awful.”

Danny reached out to hug her into his side, one-armed and brief. “Don’t worry,” he told her, grinning right back at her. “I think Tuck and I will keep you on track with that.”

“Oh, good,” Sam leaned into his side. “And hey,” she turned to look at him.

“What?”

“At least one of us ends up with our teenage crush as an actual real thing.” Her grin was pure and simple _evil_ when he looked at her. “See, I could kind of see the writing on the wall, even as a high schooler, but you and Vlad?” she laughed. “Danny, I still kind of hate the guy but I know how you feel about him. How you’ve always felt about him, even though you used to think it was something else. I remember how, even with you coughing up blood and ectoplasm after a fight with him, you still told me that there was a good guy in there somewhere.”

“Stubborn and stupid,” Danny’s grin turned a little sheepish. “I think that’s what you called me, anyway.”

Patting at the top of his head, Sam nodded. “How does he treat the kids?”

“Good. He adores them, actually,” Danny laughed a little. “I think he just needed a family that actually cared about him. William Carter and the clone kids seem to be filling that space and it makes him so _happy_ , Sam. I’ve actually seen him smile – really smile! – when he talks to them or plays with the kids.”

“So he’s a good dad,” Sam nudged the top of her head against his for a second, then pulled away. “And he’s happy now. And he’s not chasing your mom,” she sighed. “Danny, he’s pretty much the only other member of your species.”

“It does make it feel a little inevitable,” Danny shrugged a shoulder. “But I like him. I like who I see coming out of the mess of the man he used to be. Sam, he’s really changed. The Vlad Masters I knew as a kid isn’t there anymore.” He huffed out a breath, a quiet sort of laughter this time. “This Vlad is a good man and a good father and I just…I like him. I might even love him.”

“Ah,” Sam nodded, then took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Are you going to tell him that?”

“I think so,” Danny took her hands in his own. “I still love you, too.”

“But, again, we’re back to that whole ‘not in love with you’ thing. I’m guessing you’re in love with him?” Sam raised an eyebrow, watching as he nodded. “That’ll be interesting to try and have to explain to your parents.”

“Oh, man,” Danny burst into laughter. “Tell me about it. They’re still getting used to the whole thing. This on top of that? It’s going to be an interesting year.” He shook his head. “Oh, by the way,” he gestured vaguely around the room. “We had some stuff happen. There was a fight – not quite on the level of Pariah Dark, but still a really big battle sort of thing. One of Clockwork’s old acquaintances – I told you a little about him. Rewind? Dude tried to level the entire town, controlled a lot of the ghosts that the Observants had locked up, and then topped it off by actually working with a rogue Observant.”

“Shit,” Sam winced. “That does not sound good.”

“I’ll tell you about it, if you want me to,” Danny turned to go back into the kitchen, tugging Sam along, when he nearly ran into Tucker. “Hey, Tuck!”

“Hey,” Tucker brandished a mug of coffee with a frown. “So, Vlad handed me this and said something about needing to go check on the other kids. Told me it was for you?” he sniffed it delicately. “We’re sure Vlad’s on the up-and-up? Maybe he poisoned this.” He paused. “That would be a pretty weak attempt on your life.”

“Thanks,” Danny took it, glancing towards the stairs. “Was everything okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with the kids, did he say why he was checking on them?”

“Nope,” Tucker popped the P, grinning stupidly. “Just said he needed to check on them. Well,” he fell back into a frown. “He did almost pour coffee on his hand and he did look like he’d heard something shocking. Maybe he was checking on them or something? Like with a clone, I mean. Or maybe he’s got an in-ear baby monitor hooked up.” He tapped the side of his head. “I think it’s not an emergency, at least.”

“If it were,” Danny took a sip of coffee. “We’d know. The kids aren’t the best at controlling powers just yet.” He looked at their faces. “And they’ve got genetics from the both of us – which means one-hundred-percent that they got powers and ghost habits as well as human ones.”

“Alright,” Tucker nodded.

“Hey,” Sam turned to look at the kitchen. “D’you think I can get another chance at talking to William Carter? Maybe not come across as such a self-absorbed bitch this time?”

“I think so,” Danny took another sip and waved for both of them to follow.

 

XxXxX

 

“In love with me?” Vlad muttered as he stormed up the stairs. _“_ In _love_ with _**me**_?” he laughed bitterly as he phased through a wall, taking a shortcut to his bedroom.

He dropped to his bed, hands buried in his hair as he closed his eyes, rolling so that he faced the ceiling. “ _Me?”_ he gestured almost violently at the gold-painted ceiling above him, eyes wide. “How is that even _possible?_ ” he groaned and rolled back over, shoving his face into his pillow. “It cannot have been a lie, Daniel would not have known I could hear him!”

Vlad groaned and curled his entire body into a ball, burying the back of his head under his arms, his face still pressed into the pillow. “And he is a hero – the only lies he ever told were to protect his identity.”

Tugging at his hair, Vlad threw himself back into a sitting position and took a deep breath. He took a second one, then a third, then pulled his phone out of his pocket. Closing his eyes, he pressed a number and waited as it dialed.

Someone on the other end answered. “Hello Vlad.”

“Doctor Yannak,” he swallowed nervously. “I…Can I schedule an appointment? For tomorrow or the day after?”

“Of course, Vlad. I am glad you are able to bring yourself to do so,” Yannak’s voice, slightly tinny over the call, still sounded at least somewhat happy to hear from him. At least one of them was, Vlad thought as he dug his nails into his knee through his slacks. “I will see you at two in the afternoon, tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Vlad felt his hands shaking. “I just needed to talk to someone and something happened that I…”

“Vlad?”

“I would talk to Daniel, but he is the one I need to talk about and I do not think that he would appreciate me speaking about him to his face.”

“Vlad,” Yannak’s voice was soothing and firm, no-nonsense and calm. “Take a deep breath for me, alright?”

He did.

“Now,” Yannak continued. “Talk to me.”

 

Later that day, Vlad found Danny in the living room, surrounded by papers.

“Why is it, when there is a perfectly good dining room table that you could spread out on, you’re possibly damaging your knees and taking up half of my living room?” Vlad leaned against the doorway, frowning as he raised an eyebrow.

Danny was kneeling at the edge of the coffee table, skimming his eyes over various papers and sorting them in some way. “Easier this way.”

“Daniel,” Vlad paused, watching the younger Halfa sorting through papers. “What are you _doing_?”

“Currently?” Danny barely even glanced away from his task, dropping another paper into a pile. The whole thing was organized around his knees in a system only he could decipher, and he bit his lip, teeth working at it while he skimmed one of the sheets in his hands. “Trying to help. The Observants need to re-trial a lot of ghosts because of the one who went, well,” he glanced at Vlad again. “You know.”

“I do know,” Vlad blinked, stepping fully into the room and kneeling next to him. “But why?”

“Clockwork and Nocturne both had teachers,” Danny stuck a pencil between his teeth, his next words coming out muffled. “We’re trying to figure out where, exactly, they would fall in the scale of things. I got Tucker to print out a list of all the ghosts we’ve ever run into. There’s more than I remembered, actually. Like,” he reached over and picked up a smaller stack from behind his left hip. “There’s a ghost that’s a little girl and when you piss her off, things get…Bad.”

Vlad quirked an eyebrow up. “Isn’t that an apt description of every ghost when they’re angry, my boy?”

“Stop that,” Danny gave him a look.

“Stop what?”

“Stop talking like you’re older than you are,” Danny jerked his jaw, letting the pencil drop onto the carpet. “We both know you’re only a little bit older than me. It’s like the clothing, you’re supposed to dress your age now. You’re also supposed to talk like your own age.”

“I cannot change the way I speak,” Vlad dropped to the carpet, far more agile than the silver of his hair suggested.

“Yeah, I know,” Danny sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “I should be a bit better about pointing things out. All I meant was that you talk like you’re from the generation _before_ the one you were born into originally.”

“Ah,” Vlad leaned back on his hands, mimicking a pose he had often seen Danny in. “My father’s fault, I believe. He spoke in an older fashion, likely due to his age at the time of having a child.” He shook his head, not seeing Danny perk up and put his hands on his ankles.

It was rare for Vlad to talk about his parents or his childhood.

“At any rate,” Vlad shrugged. “Old habits are hard to break.”

Danny nodded and picked up some of the papers again. “Yeah. I’m glad you’re breaking some of them, though. There are some that you absolutely do not need to keep.” He glanced at the top paper and winced. “Oh, man. That’s going to be interesting.”

“Which one?”

“Undergrowth,” Danny turned the paper for him to see as well. “He mind-altered Sam and tried to get her to be his plant-queen-daughter. You can probably guess about how well that went.”

“Understandable,” Vlad skimmed over the paper. “I had not even realized you had faced this many ghosts,” he waved a hand at the papers surrounding them. “For some reason, I had thought it would be far less than this.”

“I’d even forgotten about some of these guys,” Danny shrugged. “Some of them…Some of them make me _really_ wish I could meet some of the people who helped them become ghosts in the first place. Like Youngblood,” he tugged a small stack of papers towards himself, pulling one of them out and handing it to Vlad. “That stack is child ghosts,” he admitted quietly. “Klemper goes there, so does Youngblood. When he was alive, Youngblood was Lester Young. He liked pirates and cowboys and astronauts.”

“What happened to him?” Vlad took the paper and read through some of it.

“He was murdered,” Danny sighed. “If you manage to get a look at him when he’s not pretending to be one of the things he likes, you’ll notice he’s missing a hand and a foot – no matter what he makes himself look like, they’re always missing and replaced by something.”

Vlad frowned again, looking up from the papers in his hands. “Why?”

“He was murdered by a child killer, back around the time of the moon landing. Small town sort of a thing, serial killer, ten kids disappeared. The killer,” Danny made a face, somewhere between disgust and horror. “The dude cut off a hand and a foot from each kid and preserved them, kept them in boxes labeled with names and dates.”

“…That is _horrifying,_ ” Vlad felt his stomach roll.

Danny grimaced. “It…Kind of gets worse, especially when you’re looking at the ghost kids. Sidney Pointdexter, of course. Made to look like a suicide, was really murdered, our old _friend_ Spectra.” He sighed again, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Klemper though – he was named Thomas Klemper. As far as we can tell, between what we can get out of him and what we’ve managed to find, he was a low-functioning autistic kid when he was alive. What little proof we have points to his father murdering him, possibly to try and ‘Save’ him.”

“That is awful,” Vlad turned to look at Danny. “Daniel, you’ve done so much more when it comes to the ghosts than I ever thought you had.”

“I just don’t want to forget what happened,” Danny met his eyes. “Thomas Klemper was reported as having gotten sick, and I think his dad just thought it was the best way to help his kid. Wrong, of course, awful and gross and wrong and – and just so bad at dealing with it!” he growled, his hands flaring green for a second, his eyes flashing the same color. “I’m trying to keep these guys from going off the edge of things.”

“Tell me what you’ve done?”

“I got Klemper to go live near Frostbite,” Danny smiled. “Klemper has ice powers, Frostbite does too, and it gives Klemper someone to watch over him. They get along pretty well. On top of that, I managed to get Wulf to live there as well – a werewolf in the arctic, sounds like a B-movie on an old sci-fi channel.”

“Which one is Wulf again?”

“The big werewolf looking one, he can claw open natural portals?” Danny frowned when Vlad seemed to be having trouble remembering. “He speaks Esperanto. He’s getting better at English, but he mostly still just speaks Esperanto.”

“Oh, him,” Vlad nodded, looking through the papers again. “So you’re trying to pull together full files on them in hopes of getting the Observants re-trials done faster?”

“Yeah, figured I could help.”

Vlad watched Danny for a minute, watched as he went back to sorting through the papers, writing down small notes. There was something calm about him, these days, something that seemed more mature than Vlad had ever thought he would be.

The frustrating and annoying teenager he had been had melted away, the quick-flare temper and the hero-complex had died down and left behind…

It took significant effort not to make a panicked noise once Vlad realized where his thoughts were going: His maturing had left behind someone that Vlad could almost see himself being with. In combination with what he had heard Daniel say, earlier, to his little goth friend, it was almost enough to make him go into a panic attack.

And he had no experience in matters like those.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me be very clear: I do not like Sam as she is in the show. She is written from the perspective of a man who views women as annoyances, it seems, and I do not like how she acts. The jealousy and the anger and the unpredictable and the snap-judgment crazy girl she is in the show pisses me off.
> 
> But I like her potential.
> 
> I like how she could have been if she hadn't just been shuffled off into "Annoying female sidekick". In this AU, she is still very much bitter over how she and Danny ended their relationship, even though it was a fairly calm ending. I hope you guys like how I wrote her.


	5. At The Heart

Something was wrong with Vlad.

The older Halfa was hiding away from him and it made Danny _nervous_. It made him worry about Vlad regressing to how he used to be. He liked being around Vlad now – loved him, just a bit – and he didn’t want to return to how they had been. Villain and Hero, enemies of the worst kind, unable to be around each other without tearing at each other’s throat.

He didn’t want Vlad to obsess and keep himself miserable, not anymore.

As a teenager, he was very clueless as to the mental state of one of his greatest nemeses. Danny had fought against Plasmius for so long without knowing how broken the man behind him was – it had only been the incident with the door that had informed him, actually. He hadn’t known how much help Vlad needed until the other man had built a doorway into a realm of shadows that would give him access to the Nightmare Throne.

That had been a pretty clear signal that the man needed help.

Coming across him, on the verge of insanity and ready to rip his life apart for a chance at something that could have killed him – that had been a bit of a wake-up call.

Right now, however, Vlad wasn’t able to be found.

Danny had checked the entire house, had searched it room-by-room, and had come up with nothing. The children, when he had checked on them a few minutes ago, were in the living room. A movie was playing on the television, mostly ignored by the kids as they chattered at each other in the language they seemed to have developed. It accounted for Damien’s high-pitched squeaks that seemed to be words, Dana’s stutter and underdeveloped soft palette, and Daven’s non-existent tongue.

Seeing them together made Danny happy in a way he couldn’t really explain.

But their other parent was still missing, so he had to keep looking. It really was the most frustrating thing, at the moment, that Vlad could phase through walls and floors. Searching for a half-ghost was an aggravation.

After what felt like forever, Danny felt his ghost-sense go off.

Turning the corner, he spotted Vlad.

Upon spotting him, the older Halfa dove through a wall, wide-and-wild-eyed. He looked panicked, like he had when the world had been put in danger by one of the most powerful ghosts Danny had ever met. Not giving up, Danny followed, phasing into the room as well.

"Vlad, you can't just run away when you're freaking out, you have to talk to someone!" Danny growled, latching a hand around the older Halfa's arm, dragging him back.

"Daniel, you cannot expect me to-" Vlad swallowed heavily, his hair falling to frame his face as he looked down at his feet. "Please, Daniel, if you care for me at all you'll let me go right now so that I can leave here."

Danny slid his hand down until their fingers were intertwined. "Damn it, I'm not going to let you hide from this, you have a family that cares about you, I CARE ABOUT YOU! I'm not just going to let you disappear because you're scared of being anything more than a lonely old man who isn't actually all that old!"

"...Daniel, you wouldn't understand."

"You really want to try me? I've been put through a lot because of you, frootloop." he took a deep breath, trying to calm down. "We have kids together. You tried to clone me, and then you had to stabilize them in the timeline by adding your own DNA in, so it's not like I don't know you did that! Danielle looks more like you with every day she's alive, but she's got my coloring." he squeezed Vlad's hand. "I'm not going to let you retreat into the shell of 'Crazy And Rich Old Man Mayor Masters’ that you've got built up.

"Dan's from a defunct timeline where I had you pull the ghost half out of me, and then he was angry and betrayed and he feels everything I felt, but a lot more intense, so he went insane and dragged your half out to create himself." Danny tugged at his hair with his other hand, making a face as he stared at a wall for a second. "Don't tell me I wouldn't understand, Vlad. I’ve seen a _lot_ of crazy, some of it caused by you!"

"Then what do you want me to tell you, Daniel? That I'm lonely? You know that already." Vlad's upper lip curled back in a snarl, even as he still held his hand. "That's something you've known for a long time, even when I didn't."

"Maybe you should start opening up to someone who isn't your therapist!" Danny's voice was starting to edge into his Ghostly Wail.

"What do you want from me? I'm _scared_ and I don't want to be alone, and all I've ever done is make sure that that IS WHAT HAPPENS BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I DESERVE!" Vlad's eyes went wide as he yelled, dropping Danny's hand like it had burned him as he clapped both hands over his mouth. For a second, he looked wild, like he was a wounded animal looking for any sort of escape. "...I didn't-" he made a shuddering sort of noise, a sound of fear. "Please ignore that."

"You're a little out of luck, Masters, I'm not forgetting a single second of this." Danny reached for his elbow. His voice was softer now, all traces of threat gone from it as he tugged Vlad in closer. "I'm just kind of glad we're having this talk now, instead of when I was fifteen or something."

Vlad's eyes were still wide and a little wild as he looked at Danny's face. "You-"

"Are really glad we're on more even footing now, as opposed to what we would have been a couple of years ago." Danny nudged him against the wall, sliding down it with him. "And hey, a couple of years ago, that's not something you would have admitted to feeling."

"I don't just feel-" Vlad bit his lip, looking away even as he allowed Danny to wrap an arm around him.

"If I could go back and change what happened to you, I would. I might not change the Halfa part of it, but I would go back and change what happened to you with your dad." Danny lay Vlad's head on his shoulder, carding a gentle hand through his hair. "I might also try to find a way to make it so you get out of the household entirely."

Vlad let himself be led, snorting in laughter at that. "My mother was a lovely person, Daniel."

"Then maybe I'd leave you with her and find someone else to raise you. What your dad did to you isn't okay, and I think it's time you understand that." Danny dug his chin into the elder Halfa's shoulder, hugging him tightly. "Right now, I kind of think you need a hug from my dad, because he kind of gives the best ones, but I'm hoping I'll do until you can go see him or something."

"I think you more than do." Vlad turned his head to one side, cheeks flushed a bright red color as his hand clenched in the fabric of Danny's shirt. "...Thank you."

"It's not a problem," Danny smiled softly at the top of Vlad's head, unable to see the man's eyes. "I mean, there's a bunch of reasons I should be supporting you in the first place, but the main one is that I actually kind of like you as a person when we're both aiming for the same things. You're a decent guy when you learn to let things go, and part of the recovery process is admitting that things got screwed up." he pulled back, tapping the knuckles of his first two fingers against Vlad's chest. "Reasons, not excuses."

"I-I know." Vlad nodded, swallowing his nerves. A shaky smile formed on his face, his eyes watery. "Heh, listen to me," he muttered, wiping at his face. "I sound like one of the children."

Before Danny could answer, a ghostly shriek echoed through the house, followed by the sound of several sets of feet running up the stairs. Dawyn made it through the door first, his eyes wide in panic and terror, his hands clenching uselessly, followed by Darren and Daven. "Dana," he choked out, his entire body trembling. "S-something took D-dana!"

Darren floated in next to him, his boney hands curled carefully around something, offering it to Danny when he got close enough. "That's Damien," Danny said quietly, taking the smallest clone into his own hands. "Dana usually carts him around like it's her job or something. What-" he looked at the faces of the clones, every last one of them afraid. "Can you describe what took her?" he asked carefully.

Vlad stood up slowly, stepping closer to Dawyn and putting a calming hand on his shoulder. Despite the way he had been acting only minutes before, he had pulled on a mask of calm and collected. "It's alright," he said, "Do you have a description of what took her? We'll get her back."

Dawyn still trembled, his entire body shaking as he nodded. "It was...G-green," he said decisively. "An-and slimy. L-like a-" he frowned for a moment, sifting through the limited vocabulary he had to work with. "Snot." he finally decided on, looking at where Danny sat with Damien in his hands. "F-found Dam- F-found him on the floor, no-not moving. Heard h-her scream, saw a f-f-face wit-with dark e-eyes when we ran in."

Nodding, Vlad smiled reassuringly at him. "We'll find her. Is there anything else you can tell us?"

"R-room felt weird," Dawyn frowned again, the wrinkles between his eyes growing deep. "L-l-like it was de-de-de-de-de...Rotting. Felt dead." he shook his head, still watching Damien. "Felt miser- sad."

Danny stood, stepping to Vlad's side. "That sounds like someone we know," he said quietly, no hint of happiness in his voice. Rage flashed through his eyes as he met Vlad's, fingers curled into a protective cage around their smallest clone-child. "Sound familiar at all?"

A moment of thought had Vlad nodding. "Spectra."

"Stay here with them," Danny handed off Damien to Vlad, cupping the older Halfa's hands around him. "I'm going to go to mom and dad's lab and grab one of their instruments, should help us find her faster. Keep them close, alright?"

Vlad nodded again, watching as Danny phased through the floor.

He even made it ten minutes before he called in William and Wilson to watch over the children, phasing through the walls and hunting Spectra's energy signature down.

 

He found her energy signature in a park, nearby to where the battle against Rewind had been.

“Vlad Masters,” someone’s voice crooned. “You really have grown up nicely, haven’t you? A long step away from the miserable runt I watched over in the hospital.”

Vlad clenched his fists at his sides, steeling himself and looking down at her as she walked towards him. “Penelope Spectra,” he greeted her. “Pity I did not know your full name when you had me trapped in a hospital all those years ago.” He watched as she stopped a decent distance away from him, smart enough to not come within his reach. “Perhaps it could have saved me a fair amount of grief had I known it back then.”

“Oh sweetie,” she chuckled, looking over the top of her glasses at him. “There’s nothing you can ever do to stop me.”

She moved faster than he thought possible, slipping past him and flickering in form. Speeding in circles, flashing from red to black and back again, Spectra howled with laughter as he stayed in one spot and tried to watch her. “Your misery is still hanging around you!” she cackled. “You’ve grown up physically but mentally, misery-wise, you’re still the lonely little brat I made you into _all those years ago!”_

A hand landed on the back of his neck and for a moment, the entire world around him went white.

When he could see again, he was on his knees, feeling exhausted and drained. “That little brat grew up into more of the same, just richer,” Spectra taunted, still holding onto the back of his neck. “I should play the long-game more often, it just tastes…So much _better._ ” She pressed her forehead to his, their glasses clattering together. He could smell ozone and something else, something he didn’t even want to think about in the context of her.

She smelled like some of his nightmares.

With a cackle, she threw him backward, following as he skidded across the ground. Just as he finally stopped moving, she slammed a foot down on his elbow, forcing the joint into an awkward position. He could hear it when it crackled and sent waves of pain through his entire body. When Vlad tried to stand up, Spectra kicked out at his face, the spike of her heel slashing across his nose. He could hear that cracking as well, followed by a stream of blood dripping down his face.

"Please," Vlad curled one hand tightly around his broken elbow, ignoring the blood dripping out of his nose. "Please just give me my daughter back."

Spectra laughed, a knife-edge sort of sound, angry and cruel. "And why would I do that? Your misery is some of the best I've ever tasted! If I give her back to you, you go back to being some sort of sap in love with a man who's only been around for twenty-odd years. And sweetie," she cooed at him, bending neatly at the waist as she trailed her claw-like nails across his cheek. "Oh sweetie, do you really think he could love you back? The miserable bachelor, the grumpy old man who creeped on his mother and on him, tried to destroy him and keep him in equal measure?

"What sort of friend would I be if I let you continue like that? An awful one, that's for sure." she laughed again, a warped sort of affection in her gaze as she pressed closer to him, one hand curling around the back of his neck. "And I am your friend, don't you remember? You were in the hospital, and I was the only one to ever visit you!"

Vlad's entire body trembled as she started to drain him, the backs of his eyes going dry, his mouth a desert. His spine felt like it was made of jelly, unable to support him any longer as he fell to his backside on the ground. "I..."

Her other hand was wrapped in his hair, tilting his head back to meet her eyes. "I was the only one you could ever rely on, baby." she hissed the words inches from his lips. "No one could ever treat you so good as I do. Not the Fentons, especially not Danny. What would he want from some miserable Old Frootloop?"

"Let him **_go_**."

Spectra paused, an eyebrow raised. "Ooh, Danny." she chuckled. "Still worrying about what everyone thinks of you?"

For a moment, Vlad managed to see the younger Halfa's face over her shoulder. His nostrils were flaring with every breath he forced through his nose, his fists clenched at his sides. Everything about his posture spoke of the violence he wished on the ghost in front of him, his eyes a brilliant green.

His hands were coated so thickly in ice, like medieval-styled gauntlets, that Vlad couldn't even see the shape of them anymore. "Spectra," Danny began, warning in his tone as his body shook with anger the older Halfa hadn't known he could possess. "Let him go. Final chance at walking away."

"Let him go?" she stood up, her hand still twined into Vlad's hair. "How about I let _her_ go instead?" she motioned towards the sky, a smug smirk on her face. "If I give the signal, Bertrand drops the little brat from several hundred feet in the air. I have to wonder," she grinned, her teeth flashing. "Is she trained enough yet to know how to fly?"

At her side, Vlad went stiff, his eyes following her gesture, as if he were calculating how quickly he could make it to Dana's side.

A plume of icy air billowed out from Danny's nose, his eyes almost burning to look at as his entire posture tightened. "How about you bring Dana back down safely and let Vlad go?" he suggested, voice trembling with rage as he pinned her with his gaze. "Because if this goes any other way, I am going to destroy you."

"Sweetie, you could barely even land a hit on me when you were a teenager. What're you going to do now?" she cackled, licking at her purple lips. "Throw some snow at me and hope that it hurts? Oh, baby boy, do you honestly think that the classic moves are going to work here? I still wonder if I wasn't right all those years ago, you really are a baby, a loser, _a nothing._ "

The white rings that marked his transformation formed around his middle, leaving Phantom behind when they disappeared.

"Exactly." Danny met her eyes, shifting his stance to attack. "I was a teenager, and that was a long time ago."

When he moved, it was faster than Vlad had ever seen before, forcing Spectra to release her hold on him and throw herself backward. The moment her hand was out of his hair, Vlad scrambled to his feet, wincing when his elbow jostled with the movement, ignoring it for the sake of getting out of the way of the fight. Unnoticed, a strand of shadow wrapped around his uninjured arm, tugging him in a different direction.

He followed with an undignified wheeze, his own transformation instinctively changing him as he came face-to-face with his uncle. "William."

The older man steadied him, eyebrows raised as he took in his nephew's features. "Vladimir. Are you alright?"

"Sore and a little panicked, but otherwise fine." Vlad watched as Danny shot a bolt of ectoplasm at Spectra's stomach, sending her spinning off-course and across the ground. "Daniel needs backup, he shouldn't be fighting her alone." he looked down at his arm, frowning at it. "Broken arms are so inconvenient."

"Don't worry, dad!" a voice called out from above, a brief touch on the top of his head as Danielle went shooting past. "We've got this!"

William allowed himself a smirk, settling his hand on Vlad's shoulder and guiding him quickly out of the area. "Dana will be fine. Your other children and Wilson are seeing to her safe return as we speak. They should be back-" he looked up, watching with amusement as Bertrand hit the ground, immediately curling in on himself, protecting his head when Dan dropped down next to him. "There they are."

Dan kicked the scrabbling hand of Spectra's lackey away, curling his arms tighter around the small girl in his arms. When he spotted Vlad, most of the anger left his gaze, and he stepped closer, leaning down to whisper to Dana. After she giggled, Dan approached the Halfa in front of him. "Vlad." he greeted stiffly, awkward pouring off of him from top to bottom. "You want to take her?" he offered the second smallest of Vlad's clone-children out to the Halfa, like he didn't know what else to do.

"He said something about a broken arm," William intervened, smiling at both of them. "I don't think he can at the moment." he turned off to the side as Wilson walked up to him, shadows trailing behind.

Vlad made a face, then moved closer to them anyway, brushing Dana's hair out of her eyes. "Are you alright?" he asked her, trying to ignore the lump in his throat at the sight of tearstains on her chubby cheeks. "Did he hurt you?"

"S-scared." Dana managed to get out, her bottom lip quivering. "Di-n't like."

Curling his hand around the back of her head, Vlad pressed a kiss to her forehead, tucking his chin against her after he did. "I know," he whispered. "And I will do my absolute best to ensure that this never happens again."

With a growl, Dan nudged her against Vlad's hip. "Support her with one arm for a moment. There's something I have to do."

As soon as Dana was securely held, he stormed over to Bertrand, sparks of electricity flying off of him. "If you ever come near my family again," he hissed in the ghost's face, dragging him off the ground, nose-to-nose with him. "I will drain you of every drop of ectoplasm you contain. I will destroy you in ways you can't even comprehend, and I will laugh as I do so, is that clear?"

“Y-yes,” Bertrand’s eyes were wide as he looked at Dan, shrinking back from the scarier ghost.

“Good,” Dan threw him to the side, then moved back to stand next to Vlad. “You,” he pointed at him. “Should be thanking every higher power that you know of right now. Danny was able to sense that you had gone here and that Spectra was here as well. The only reason we weren’t right there when things started happening was because Dana needed to be rescued.” He barely even moved as Danielle landed next to him. “You should be _grateful,”_ he growled the words out before turned and moving to stand several feet away.

“So,” Danielle watched as her brother stood next to William. “That basically is Dan-speak for, ‘Don’t get killed, old man’. And, really, I sort of agree with the sentiment.”

She patted his uninjured arm and ruffled Dana’s hair before walking over to stand with Dan. William moved back to Vlad’s side. “Here,” he said softly, taking Dana back and supporting her with both arms. “I’ve got you, little one. Your father is just a little damaged right now, his arm needs to be fixed before he can hold you again.” He looked at Vlad, studying him. “We found out something interesting. Wilson did, at any rate. Knowledge was his gain and sometimes that knowledge is something he must strive for rather than something that just comes to him.”

“And?” Vlad let Dana take his fingers and hold onto his hand like it was a stuffed toy. She fell asleep like that, after a few minutes.

“Penelope Spectra is one of several children. Daniel has had to deal with one of them already,” William sighed, stroking some of Dana’s hair out of her face. “As have I. The shadow that played advocate of the Nightmare Throne, he is one of Spectra’s siblings. The shadow that plagued a young man named Johnny Walker and his family, following the three of them into death, he is one of Spectra’s siblings. There are others,” he sighed. “But Wilson wants to talk with Clockwork about them. Perhaps even those Observants, even with how little we think of those people.”

“That would probably be a good idea,” Danielle spoke up again. “Make sure we know what we’re facing before we face it.”

A flash of green off to one side interrupted anything else that might have been said and Vlad used both arms to throw up a shield around the entire group as the air seemed to explode. Danny came flying out of the cloud of green, rolling across the ground. When he stopped moving, he stood back up and braced himself for whatever would come next.

What came next, however, was an officer that worked for the Observants standing behind Spectra and binding her wrists together.

For a moment, Danny looked like he wanted to leap forward and continue the fight.

Vlad dropped the shield and reached out with the arm that wasn’t broken, dragging the younger Halfa to his side. “Officer,” he greeted the ghost. The ghost looked at them and nodded, slipping a power-restraint around Spectra’s throat. “What is happening?”

“After the attack upon the human population,” the ghost started, looking at Spectra as she struggled against his hold. “The ghost known as Rewind was taken into custody. The ghost known as Spectra evaded capture, however – it was by the information offered up by the Master of Time and the fight that the Halfa Daniel Fenton engaged in that we were able to track her down. We will contain her,” the officer looked at Danny again. “We will trial her. We will put her away.” He pulled something off of his belt and opened a portal directly into what looked like a courtroom. Behind him, the Observants could be seen. “We will deliver news when she is put away.”

Danny took a deep breath and nodded. “Good.”

The officer went through the portal and it closed behind him. Vlad looked at Danny and took a deep breath as well.

Hopefully, things would be better from here on out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting some things up -- can you see the danger on the horizon? 
> 
> Keep an eye on Spectra.
> 
> Also: William is kind of done with his nephew's bullshit.

**Author's Note:**

> hehehehehehehehe....  
> I've put off posting this because I wanted to do it in one chapter, but chunks of story it is.


End file.
